Auschwitz

Introduction

Train line with a chilling end - Berkenau

The concentration camp of Auschwitz (in Polish: Oświęcim) is one of Poland's major sights. Even today it is not hard to imagine what this place must have looked like in the 1940-1945 period. The fortified walls, barbed wire, barracks, gas chambers and cremation ovens show the conditions within which the Nazi genocide took place in the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the largest concentration camp. It is believed that as many as 1.1 million people were systematically murdered in the camp's gas chambers, those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and medical experiments. 90 percent of those people were jews. The other were mainly Polish citizens, Roma, Sinti and prisoners of war. It is suprising how close the camp is to the village itself. The day Auschwitz was liberated (27th of January) is commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

These days, it stands as a symbol of humanity's cruelty of the holocaust. The camp serves as a museum. From the hundreds of original baracks only 19 survived.